Steve Kass

Do not make things easy for yourself by speaking or thinking of data as if they were different from what they are; and do not go off from facing data as they are, to amuse your imagination by wishing they were different from what they are. Such wishing is pure waste of nerve force, weakens your intellectual power, and gets you into habits of mental confusion.

Mary Everest Boole, in “Philosophy and Fun of Algebra” (1909)
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13447

I guess it’s easier to write “the Stieltjesness of f” than “the fact that f has the Stieltjes property.” The jury seems to be out about whether to capitalize the word. Of the five instances Google finds, one is at the beginning of a sentence, and two are uncapitalized. Here’s to not resolving the issue.

A lot of people must wonder about the name of this place, and the school’s FAQs page answers the question “What does “Isothermal” mean?”:

In meteorological terms, the word “isotherm” refers to a line drawn on a weather map showing identical or even temperatures.  If something is isothermal, it is of equal or constant temperature with respect to either time or space. Research has shown that it is not uncommon for an isotherm to curve through the area of Rutherford and Polk Counties where Isothermal Community College is located.

When choosing a name for the college, the original Board of Trustees drew from this regional characteristic to create a name that described the area and represented the college in an inventive manner.  So now when someone breaks the ice by asking you about the name Isothermal, you’ll be able to pass on part of the school’s unique history!

Isotherms probably pass through most places most of the time. The isothermally distinctive places are places like Bullhead City, that frequently don’t lie on an isotherm.

I can’t tell which would be more amazing – if the 1967 Atlantic article on data and privacy rediscovered and reproduced here is for real, or if Modern Mechanix has fooled us big time. Either way, an amazing article. (Thanks for pointing me to this, Jason.)

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